[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Record UI

[tom.staubitz at fhtw-berlin.de]

On Mar 31, 2011, at 6:41 PM, Art Hunkins wrote:

> Comments/suggestions regarding the Record UI:
> 
> 1) I think Tom's ideas (http://www.flatlandfarm.de/blog/?p=283) are right on target in re: audio recording. +1.
> 
> 2) I'm unclear as to whether the oscilloscope ("measure-type") display is a preview only,
That's exactly how it was intended.

> or is active during the entire record process.
During the recording process I'd prefer a graph that displays what has been recorded similar to the one in Audacity or other recording tools.

> If the latter, I fear for audio glitches (and if Record ends up audio-glitching, you are likely to hear from me about it indefinitely!) Probably safer would be to display oscilloscope only in preview mode, for setting appropriate record level, and demoing (or otherwise exploring) other aspects of sound. (By "preview" here, I refer to testing the record level.)
Of course the recording itself should not be affected by any visuals. 

> 3) Let's keep in mind that Audacity is available as a Suger activity - at least from the command line. It's full-featured, can edit soundfiles and be used for all kinds of sound demos and displays. In my view, we should not worry that Record doesn't include these features.
Audacity's UI under Sugar is absolutely unusable. The texts often are too big for their boxes. Either they protrude or they are cut. Sometimes they are way too small. In all cases they are unreadable. 
Besides that, Audacity also is not very stable under Sugar, it often crashed on me. 
In my opinion Audacity is also way too complex for smaller children, even if all the UI issues were fixed.

> 4) I dislike the lips icon intensely. Besides otherwise being misleading, it suggests *voice* recording only (and probably only speech). The "ear" seems much more appropriate, or (for that matter) a stylized waveform or oscilloscope display. I see the primary application as the recording of environmental (often nature) sounds, i.e., exploring the *world* of sound.

Why not use the microphone icon that is currently used in Record's audio section?



> 
> Art Hunkins
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gary Martin" <garycmartin at googlemail.com>
> To: "Gonzalo Odiard" <gonzalo at laptop.org>
> Cc: "Sugar-dev Devel" <sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org>
> Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2011 8:56 AM
> Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Record UI
> 
> 
> Hi Gonzalo,
> 
> On 18 Mar 2011, at 15:15, Gonzalo Odiard wrote:
> 
>> I have prepared mockups about the changes I want to do in the Record UI. [1]
>> The changes were discussed with Simon Schampijer and we take ideas from
>> Tom Staubitz.
> 
> Just following up from Sunday's design meeting:
> 
> http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar-meeting/meetings/2011-03-27T15:04:42
> 
> See the above log for details, but here's a quick summary:
> 
> - place the chronometer combo in the secondary toolbars, as opposed to the main toolbar
> 
> - write each object to Journal upon its creation rather than trying to write all of them at once on an Activity switch or Stop (which can feel like a crash/hang if you have recorded more than a few new objects)
> 
> - remove the (i) info icon from the toolbar and instead badge each media thumbnail on the bottom right corner with an info widget (icon still to be decided)
> 
> - use the Journal detail view API explicitly for editing individual object metadata information, rather than the custom info/take notes side bar, see Browse and its download complete alert for example code. We standardise on an edit details UI for all Activities that want to edit their metadata at any time, an existing proposal already being worked on [1].
> 
> - camera icon should be the one as seen in sugar-artwork for camera-external, need a similar styled icon for video (Walter has also recently started using camera-external in Turtle Art/Blocks)
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> - I suggested the sugar-artwork microphone icon (lips) would be good for the audio recording icon (I believe it was originally designed for use as the device icon for a proposed microphone input gain control palette). We didn't formally +1 in the meeting, but worth considering if you don't find it controversial
> 
> 
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> 
> There is still some concern over the user interaction for a primary tool, with sub-toolbar, triggering a full screen canvas change (e.g. as mocked up in your Record camera vs video vs audio, and my Memorize play vs create UI modes), as it might be confusing to get back out of a mode (especially when triggered unexpectedly by hover delay). I'll make a test activity with this interaction for next Sunday's design meeting and see how it feels.
> 
> Regards,
> --Gary
> 
> [1] Option 1. from Christian's 'detail view anywhere' mockups http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Detailview_20110313.pdf
> 
>> Regards
>> Gonzalo
>> 
>> [1] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Godiard/Record/NewToolbar
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Tom Staubitz
------------------
tom.staubitz at fhtw-berlin.de